Do we know which ones are GOOD machines and which ones aren't? I see old ones all the time, but am afraid to buy.

There is no way of knowing if one is good or not until you mess with it awhile. I have seen good ones and I have seen some that looked good but I wouldn't want to spend much time sewing with them - then again they might work great for a project I don't want to mess up a good machine. I have seen that the old White, Kenmore, JC Penny, Montgomery Wards, Brother, some made by Janome, Riccar and others I can't think of are good. Then again don't spend a whole lot and don't expect a whole lot. I have some around I probably won't sell because I don't like them and nobody else should have to use them.... I have some that I do like but then you might love the ones I don't and I might love the ones you hate. No accounting for tastes. And I guess it makes a difference what you use it for. I think I like the ones that the needle will center - then I have had a couple that didn't center but I liked them anyway. Maybe it depends on mood? The certainly are cool looking.

NEVER let a sewing machine know you are in a hurry.

Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill

thanks again miriam! my necchi is japanese - 1981- has been absolute treasure. got, literally, thousands of hours on it and i was the only one to ever use it. ) been sewing since childhood on my grmothers singer treadle, one of the beautiful ornate ones w scroll, raised detail wood work. even as a very small child i recognized it's beauty. saw one almost as ornate on cl while looking for older machine to replace the necchi when it started entering the terminal stages of it's long worklife. gramma made all my play clothes on the fw that i now carry around. every once in a while i get on some sort of kick, and look up details, history of my two loves. i started following this forum when i joined the board a few years ago. never posted tho. so i do appreciate your time in responding to my requests. i will post pics and #'s etc on my necchi and fw soon. i will post pic of new love here too. lol...guess i'm easy, fall hard for old sewing machines, but i sure do love my new-to-me janome 1600p too!! it is very sweet! cl for 300$.

the rogue quilter - in from wandering in the sun and snow with camera in hand.

Alrighty, here is my girl. These are taken right after dust removal wipe down. She has been sitting unused in her table for, minimum, the 10 yrs I have had her in my possession and many years prior to that. I have made it my goal to bring her back to life. She is way to gunked up and sticky to sew, but the motor sounds good, nice and quiet. In the process of cleaning her up real good and then oiling the bajeezus outta her. She looks like she is going to be super fun to play with!

Couldn't find much info on her. Anyone have any idea when she was born?

Monkey Ward 1890b, or UDT J1980. I had one of these, briefly. It was a thrift store find for $25 but I just didn't like the way I had to fiddle with the tension all the time to make the decorative stitches work right. I donated it to a nursing school so that students could stitch the school patches on their uniforms and/or mend their torn pants, lol.

This is a pic I stole from the Interwebs (ebay U.K.) of the same machine, since I don't have that machine anymore. It was a smallish machine and I was told by VintageSingers people that this model has too many plastic parts that would break and not be worth repairing. But it did a lot of decorative stitches.

Seems like those old Japanese machines came with disk/cams or had a cam stack. Some had plastic cam stacks and some had metal cam stacks. They are fun to play with once they are set free of gummed up oil. The Tri-Flo works wonders on that. When it is gummed up every moving part on the machine is suspect. I think the ones with cams are just a bit easier to set free - they are simpler. I had a MW machine sort of like that one with the stitch selector on the top. I'm thinking it was a lot like Bernina in that area. I don't know if it was a knock off or made by the same company for MW or what. I do know I liked the machine and probably sold it too cheap - I hope the kid that bought it was very happy with it - it was made by Happy I think.

NEVER let a sewing machine know you are in a hurry.

Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill

I dug around and found a pic of a MW machine I sold - this is a before pic - it cleaned up wonderfully and it sewed wonderfully. I really liked the machine. It has a cam stack on the top like the one above.

NEVER let a sewing machine know you are in a hurry.

Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill